Sunday, March 20, 2011

Brewery Adventures - Saint Patricks Day - Beer Bus Tour

Yesterday I had the pleasure of joining about eight others on a bus tour through Marin county. The tour cost just about $100 and was worth every cent. We started the tour at 9:30am when the bus picked us up from Fort Mason. The tour guides (Amy and Colleen) brought beer to enjoy on the way to the Breweries, they provided one free beer for everyone on the bus -- but we played a game of beer trivia which allowed participants to win extra beers.

The first brewery that we visited was Bear Republic in Healdsburg. At Bear Republic we tried many different types of beers, from the creators of Racer 5, which is a rather popular in Northern California. As Racer 5 is a very popular beer up here where I live, I neglected to not try it and just partake of the new beers that Bear Republic had to offer. We tried many different beers, but two were better than the rest... The "Carburetor", which is one of their seasonal and experimental beers, so I couldn't find any statistics on their website. If you make it out to the brewery try the "Carburetor", it was dark and flavorful. We also tried "Red Rocket" which is a Deep Copper Red Ale with an ABV of 6.8%. The Red Rocket was my second favorite, and was also dark and flavorful.

The second stop on the tour was "Dean Biersch's HopMonk Tavern in Sebastopol". Where we tried a few different beers and eat lunch. Earlier on the bus we had to choose our lunch, off a menu that included many different options -- one of which was a vegetarian option. I noticed that there was a burger and a Portabello Mushroom burger, unfortunately the mushroom burger is the vegetarian option, but it was very good none-the-less.

The third stop was the Lagunitas brewery, the best stop on the tour. We tried about 5 different types of beers, my favorite was one called "Eyeball". Eyeball was dark and flavorful, which appears to be the choice of the day. After the tasting we took a tour of the brewery, which was cool and informative. Then we were driven back to Fort Mason and arrived at about 4:30pm.

Well Long story short, the tour was AWESOME! Anyone that would like to spend the day drinking beer and not have to worry about driving, then this bus tour is for you. You can check out available bus tours at http://www.breweryadventures.com/.